A 16-year-old student’s internship project fills the everyday self-care gap that burn and acid attack survivors face, helping them move on beyond just treatment
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At 16, most internships end with a presentation, a certificate, and a polite handshake. Sia Domkundwar’s ended with a 60-page guide attempting to fill a gap hospitals rarely acknowledge. While working through BuildUp, a mentored internship programme that embeds students in real-world projects, the Pune-based Class 11 student developed The Glow Guide: a trauma-informed, survivor-led resource for burn and acid attack survivors navigating life after medical treatment ends. The guide was built in collaboration with survivors associated with the Chhanv Foundation, an organisation long known for its work with acid attack survivors.
Hospitals, Domkundwar realised early on, are good at treating injuries. They are far less equipped to help survivors figure out how to live in bodies that have permanently changed. The questions survivors grapple with daily — what fabrics won’t irritate grafted skin, how to manage sun exposure, which cosmetic ingredients are safe, how to nourish a body healing for years — rarely come with clear answers.
Coming from a village, Anshu, an acid attack survivor, said she had no knowledge of skincare routines or which products were safe
“I observed that and I realised that there was a gap, in the non-prescription, non-medicated, everyday care and products that they need for their bodies,” Domkundwar says, “Most of them need to follow a trial-and-error method to find the handful of products that work for their skin.”
The Glow Guide responds directly to that uncertainty. It covers skincare, hair and scalp care, nails and hands, clothing, hygiene, nutrition, cosmetics, and recovery tools. It includes an ingredient safety decoder and a “Glow Directory” of survivor-vetted products, professionals, and NGOs. Crucially, it is designed to be used without pressure. There are no prescriptions, no timelines, no claims of fixing what cannot be fixed.
Sia Domkundwar
Domkundwar says she expected conversations about scars, surgeries, and sensitivity. What she did not expect was how young many survivors had been when they were attacked or the scale of violence behind those stories. “It was also eye opening and honestly terrifying to know that they were my age or younger when their lives changed forever,” she says, describing the power imbalance that surfaced repeatedly in interviews. “Girls as young as 13 or 14 were getting attacked for reasons they didn’t even know or understand.”
If the attacks attempted to erase identity, what followed, she found, was often an active reclaiming of it. “The survivors all said that they love their face and feel beautiful,” she notes, “However they also added that for them the meaning of beauty has changed.” Many use cosmetics selectively, experiment with nail art, dress up, and show up publicly. Not to conform, but to assert agency.
Anshu, an acid attack survivor associated with the Chhanv Foundation, says the hardest part of recovery was the absence of everyday guidance once medical treatment ended. “Apart from the doctor, there was no one to guide us,” she says. Coming from a village, she and her family
“had no knowledge of skincare routines or which products were safe” and were left “figuring everything out on our own”. Looking at The Glow Guide now, she says having such a resource earlier “would have made things so much easier”. Reclaiming self-care, she adds, also restored confidence: “When you are able to do your makeup or take care of yourself, you feel confident and that feeling matters a lot.”
Turning those lived experiences into a usable guide was anything but straightforward. “Their stories really couldn’t be put into bullet points,” Domkundwar says. Survivors’ advice often contradicted each other, underscoring how fragmented and personal post-trauma care can be. Even design decisions became ethical choices. “At first, my instinct was to make the guide look aesthetic and clean, but later I realised that that wasn’t the point at all.”
That a student noticed this gap, and decided to act on it, is what gives The Glow Guide its power. It doesn’t promise transformation. It offers information, dignity, and the possibility of control, one guide at a time.
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